Promoting products on a social networking system based on information from a merchant site

ABSTRACT

To promote a merchant&#39;s products on a social networking system, a promotion engine receives data from a merchant site regarding the merchant site&#39;s users&#39; activities. The users&#39; purchases of a promoted product are correlated with the user&#39;s activities performed in connection with a related product. An automated process running on a computer system then determines promotion criteria for the promoted product, based at least in part on the activities performed in connection with the related product. A promotion for the promoted product is generated and communicated to a social networking system, which displays the promotion to one or more users of the social networking system based on the determined promotion criteria.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a Continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.13/951,307 filed Jul. 25, 2013, which claims the benefit of U.S.Provisional Application No. 61/675,727, filed Jul. 25, 2012, which isincorporated by reference in its entirety.

BACKGROUND

The disclosure generally relates to promoting products on a merchantsite to users of a social networking or other online service, inparticular to promoting the products based on the merchant site's users'consumption patterns and actions of users within a social networkingsystem.

Online sites touch various facets of an online user's experience,including the user's social life (through social networking sites andtools) and shopping experience (through various online merchant sites).But these different online sites act like silos for the user's shoppinginformation and the user's social information, with limited mechanismsfor data sharing between them. This limited data sharing hinders a moreinformed shopping experience that is beneficial to the user, the socialnetworking system, and the online merchant. And in some cases, sharingcan be undesirable. For example, although social networking systems havesome capabilities for merchant sites to share their data back to thesocial networking systems, this sharing may enable competitors of themerchants to use their customer data. Therefore, it would be beneficialto enable merchants to promote their products on social networking sitesbased on their own data without exposing the data to third parties, suchas competitors.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates a system that provides recommendations or promotionsfor users based on the users' consumption data and optionally socialdata, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 2A illustrates an update presented on a user's social profile inresponse to the user indicating their preference for the promotedproduct, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 2B illustrates a promotion being displayed as a sponsored story, inaccordance with an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 2C illustrates a promotion being displayed as a sponsored ad, inaccordance with an embodiment of the invention.

The figures depict various embodiments of the present invention forpurposes of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readilyrecognize from the following discussion that alternative embodiments ofthe structures and methods illustrated herein may be employed withoutdeparting from the principles of the invention described herein.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

To promote a merchant's products on a social networking system,embodiments of the invention include a promotion engine that receivesdata from a merchant site regarding the merchant site's users' shoppingexperience. This data may include the users' viewing and purchasinghistory on the merchant site, shopping cart activity, and even thesearch engine queries the lead the users to the merchant site. Usinginsights from this obtained information, the promotion engine determinesa product to promote and a “seed” promotion criteria for promoting theproduct. In one scenario, embodiments of the invention provide easier orrelatively cheap access to data on the merchant site as compared to thesocial networking system. Accordingly, the embodiments analyzeinformation retrieved from the merchant's site to determine products tobe promoted and promotion criterion for targeting users for the promotedproduct.

The promotion criteria may comprise a user activity on another product(e.g., having added another product to the user's shopping cart),demographic information about the user, and/or social information aboutthe user obtained from a social networking system. The promotion enginethen uses the determined promoted product and promotion criteria topromote the product on a social networking site. The promotion enginemay promote the product based on the promotion criteria in many ways,such as by buying advertisements (ads or sponsored stories) for orposting content about the promoted product on the social networkingsystem. Moreover, the promotion criteria are used to determine how topromote the promoted product. For example, the promotion criteria may beused to determine targeting criteria for the advertising or to determinewhere to post the content (e.g., posting a promotion about the promotedproduct on a page devoted to a different product associated with thepromotion criteria).

In one example implementation of an embodiment of the invention, thepromotion engine receives information from a merchant site about thecustomers of the site. The information includes data in which there is astrong correlation between users who landed on the merchant site using asearch term associated with a first product and ultimately purchased asecond product. Alternatively, the data may have a strong correlationbetween users who viewed a page about the first product or who added thefirst product to their shopping cart but ultimately purchased the secondproduct. The promotion engine thus determines that the first product canbe used for promotion criteria to promote the second product (i.e., thepromoted product). Then, on behalf of the merchant site, the promotionengine promotes the second product on a social networking system in away that targets users who have expressed an interest in the firstproduct. For example, the promotion engine may post a coupon for thesecond product to a page associated with the first product or may buy anad for the second product and target the ad to users who have expressedan interest in (or “liked”) that page associated with the first product.In this way, embodiments of the invention can leverage the insightsgleamed from users' activities on a merchant site to promote themerchant's products on a social networking site, without having to sharethe data that lead to these insights. Since this is done automaticallywithout requiring involvement by the merchant sites, the promotionmethod is scalable and need not rely on human intuition or involvement.

FIG. 1 illustrates a system 100 that provides recommendations orpromotions for users based on the users' consumption data and optionallysocial data. The system 100 includes a social networking site 102, apromotion engine 104, merchant sites 112 a-n (collectively referred toas “merchant site 112”), and a network 140. Additional social networkingsites and promotion engines may be present in the system 100 andinteract with each other in a similar manner as described herein. Thenetwork 140 represents the communication pathways between the socialnetworking site 102, the promotion engine 104, and the merchant sites112 a-n. In one embodiment, the network 140 is the Internet. The network140 can also use dedicated or private communication links that are notnecessarily part of the Internet.

The social networking site 102 is communicatively coupled to a socialgraph database 105 and a social interaction database 106. Thesedatabases 105, 106 store users' social data indicating the user'sfriends, interests, preferences, groups, etc. The social graph database105 stores a social graph that includes information indicating a user'srelationship with other entities in the community, such as users,merchants, and other entities represented by a web page. The socialinteraction database 106 stores data indicating a user's and the user'sfriends' interactions with other entities in the social networkcommunity. For example, the database 106 may store comments from theuser regarding another entity or information indicating a user'spreference for another entity (e.g., like, love, favorite, dislike). Thesocial networking site 102 collects data regarding various users as theyinteract on the site 102 and populate the databases 105, 106 with thecollected information.

The merchant sites 112 a-n (collectively referred to as “merchant site112”) are communicatively coupled to their corresponding consumptiondatabases 114 a-n (collectively referred to as “consumption database114”). The merchant site 112 collects data indicating a user'sinteraction with the site 112 as the user browses and purchases variousproducts on the site. The merchant site 112 stores the collected dataabout the user as consumption data in the consumption database 114.Examples of stored consumption data include clickstream data indicatinga user's interaction with various parts of the merchant site (e.g.,viewing, selecting or clicking a particular part of the page displayinga particular product); shopping cart data indicating the user'sinteraction with a shopping cart (e.g., adding to, removing from, orbuying products placed within a shopping cart); purchasing dataindicating purchases a user has made; and search data indicating thesearches the user has performed on the merchant site and incoming searchterms that led a user to the merchant site 112. Additionally, themerchant site 112 receives, from the users or an external source, andstores the users' demographic information, such as the users' sex, agegroup, income level, and place of residence.

The promotion engine 104 promotes products for the merchant site 112 tousers on the social networking site 102 (and optionally on the merchantsite 112) based on the products' information, the users' consumptiondata, and optionally based on the users' social data. The promotionengine 104 receives from the merchant site 112 information identifyingproducts sold by the merchant site 112 and consumption data for users ofthe merchant site 112. For consumption data, the promotion engine 104retrieves consumption data through the merchant site 112 or the site'sconsumption database 114. The consumption data may be retrieved by thepromotion engine through application programming interfaces provided bythe merchant site 112 or through JavaScript on the merchant site thatcaptures and transmits the consumption data to the promotion engine 104as the user browses the merchant site.

For information regarding the products, the promotion engine 104retrieves information identifying sold products through the merchantsite 112 or a database that stores catalogs including identifyinginformation about the sold products. In one embodiment, the merchantsite 112 stores attributes associated with these sold products in theconsumption database 114. These attributes may have been specified bythe merchants, buyers or reviewer of the products. In anotherembodiment, the promotion engine 104 queries the social networking site102 or another graph network that includes the products as nodes andstores attributes associated with the nodes. The products' attributesmay be stored, updated and retrieved from the social networking site 102by the merchant site 112 (or another user) through a protocol like theOpen Graph protocol. Responsive to the query from the promotion engine104, the promotion engine 104 receives the products' attributes from thesocial networking site 102 or another graph network.

Based on the received consumption data and products' information, thepromotion engine 104 determines a promoted product, a criterion forpromoting the product on the social networking site 102, and optionallya promotion associated with the promoted product. For example, thepromotion engine 104 analyzes the consumption data and determines thatsales of a particular product are trending and therefore identifies thetrending product as the promoted product. Additionally, the analysis mayindicate that people who bought a first product also bought the promotedproduct. In one embodiment, the promotion engine 104 receives feedbackfrom the merchant site 112 and/or the social networking site 102indicating the effectiveness of a previous promotion for a promotedproduct. For example, the feedback may indicate that a previouspromotion had a high success rate (i.e. the promotion led to thetargeted users buying the promoted product) amongst users with aparticular trait.

Based on this feedback or analysis of the consumption data, thepromotion engine 104 determines a promoted product and a promotioncriterion. For example, the promotion engine 104 may recalibrate thepromotion criterion for a previously promoted product to target userswho have the same or similar characteristics as users who bought thepromoted product in response to the received promotion. The promotionengine may also determine as a promotion criterion users on the socialnetworking site 102 who have indicated a preference for the firstproduct should be targeted to receive promotions for the promotedproduct. The consumption data may also indicate that users who searchedfor a first product also interacted with information about the promotedproduct. The promotion engine 104 may therefore determine as promotioncriterion users on the social networking site 102 who have interactedwith/searched for/indicated preference for the first product should betargeted to receive promotions for the promoted product. VAlternatively, the promotion engine 104 may determine as promotioncriterion users who have indicated a preference for products with anattribute associated with the promoted product, to receive promotion forthe promoted product. Additional examples of promotion criteria based onanalysis of consumption data may include users who have the samedemographic information (like users' sex, age group, income level orplace of residence) as the users who bought the first product and thepromoted product. Another example promotion criterion includes users whohave particular characteristics that are the same as characteristics ofusers who bought the promoted product.

The promotion engine 104 may also account for currently trending topicsin blogs or the social networking site 102 for determining a promotedproduct. The promotion engine 104 may determine a trending topic on thesocial networking site 102, determine products with attributesassociated with the trending topic as promoted products, and determinethe promotion criteria as users with attributes associated with thetrending topic. For example, if the trending topic is a particular brandof shoes, the promotion engine 104 may determine the brand's products aspromoted products and determine the promotion criterion as users whohave liked or indicated their preference for that brand on the socialnetworking site 102 or the merchant site. The promotion engine 104 mayalso account for current events or special occasions for determining apromoted product. For example, the promotion engine 104 may select rosesas a promoted product once the current date is within four weeks of theValentine's Day.

In one embodiment, the promotion engine 104 identifies the promotedproduct and the promotion criteria by analyzing the consumption data,demographic data, and/or other data from external sources associatedwith these users. Any of a variety of data analysis techniques may beused, such as machine learning techniques, regression analysis, andcollaborative filtering. The analysis results in a combination of apromoted product and promotion criteria that predict a user's intent orlikelihood of purchasing the promoted product.

In one embodiment, the promotion engine 104 determines a promotioncriterion that accounts for preferences for various products within theuser's social circle (i.e., the promotion criterion accounts for theuser's social data). Examples of such criterion include users belongingto groups associated with the promoted product or the first product,users whose friends are interested in the promoted product or the firstproduct, users whose friends have indicated their preference for thepromoted product or the first product, users that belong to a particulargroup (based on user's school, work, hobbies, residence, etc.) where thepromoted product or the first product is popular.

After determining the promoted product and the promotion criteria, thepromotion engine 104 promotes the product on the social networking site102 and optionally on the merchant site 112. The promotion engine 104promotes the product on the social networking site 112 by, e.g., postingmessages including promotional content or buying advertisements on thesocial networking site 112. To promote the product through messageposts, the promotion engine 104 posts messages including promotionalcontent on the promoted product's page, the merchant site's page, orpages of products related to the promoted product on the socialnetworking site 112. The posted messages on any of these pages may bedisplayed as newsfeed stories or other message updates on pages of usersthat subscribe to or are connected to these pages. promotion engine.

Additionally, information about the promoted product may be displayed asupdates on the users' and the users' friends' pages when the userscomment about the promoted product or indicate their preference (e.g.,like, love, favorite, dislike) for the promoted product. FIG. 2Aillustrates an update presented on a user's social profile in responseto the user indicating their preference for the promoted product. Theillustrated updates are presented as a timeline 214 of promoted productsthat have been liked by the user, wherein the user's most recent likesare presented at the top and the user's earlier favorites are presentedin a descending chronological order. Moreover, the updates are displayedto the user and the user's friends on their news feed. A news feed is afeed of information displaying various updates related to the user'sfriends. An example of such a promotion is the news feed update 212 thatindicates the user's friend's preference for a particular brand ofshoes.

To promote the product through advertisement, the promotion engine 104transmits an advertisement for the promoted product and targetingcriteria for the advertisement (determined based on the promotioncriteria) to the social networking site 102. In one embodiment, thepromotion engine 104 analyzes the product information for the promotedproduct retrieved from the merchant site 112 and determines promotionalcontent for the promoted product. For e.g., the product information mayindicate a promotional price (e.g. a discounted price) or desirablefeatures of the promoted product. The promotion engine 104 analyzes theproduct information to retrieve this information, create promotionalcontent, and transmit the promotional content to the social networkingsite 102. In another embodiment, the social networking site 102 queriesand retrieves the promotional content from the merchant site 112 basedon the received identification for the promoted product.

In yet another embodiment, the promotion engine 104 determinespromotional content based on the promotion criterion and the promotedproduct. The promotion engine 104 may have promotional content withstatic language and place holders for dynamic content that may bepopulated based on the promotion criterion and the promoted product. Forexample, the promotion content may be “Like [promotion criterion], thentry [promoted product],” wherein “[promotion criterion]” and “[promotedproduct]” are dynamic content. If the promoted product is MOTOROLA RAZRPhone and the promotion criterion is users who like MOTOROLAsmartphones, the promotion engine 104 may determine the promotioncontent to be “Like Motorola smartphones, then try MOTOROLA RAZR phone.”The promotion engine 104 may also determine if an image associated withthe MOTOROLA RAZR phone is available as the phone's attributes inconsumption database 114 or on a graph network. The promotion engine 104may then retrieve the associated image and include the retrieved imagewith the textual content as promotion content. After determining thepromotion content, the promotion engine 104 transmits the promotioncontent and promotion criterion to the social networking site 102. Thesocial networking site 102 then displays the promotions on pages of theusers that meet the targeting criteria.

The promotions for a product may be presented to the users as asponsored story, a sponsored ad, or in another format in connection withtheir profiles. FIG. 2B illustrates the promotion being displayed as asponsored story 220. A sponsored story is an update that is eligible toappear as a news feed update on the user's social page. Unlike the newsfeed update, however, the sponsored story is shown distinctly on theuser's social page in response to a promotion paid for by a vendor ofthe promoted product or service. Again, in one embodiment, the promotioncriterion for a promoted product maybe based on the targeted users'demographics. Accordingly, a sponsored story may be targeted only to asegment of users that are part of a desired demographic. For example, ifa promoted product is a pair of jeans popular amongst females of agesbetween 20-25 years, the sponsored story for the pair of jeans is onlydisplayed to the users who fit in this desired demographic (females ofages between 20-25 years).

FIG. 2C illustrates a promotion being displayed as a sponsored ad 230.Like sponsored stories, these ad are shown distinctly on the user's pagein response to a promotion created/requested/bought by a vendor of thepromoted product or service. However, unlike the sponsored stories andnews feed updates, these ads may not be related to the user's friends,i.e. the user's friends may not have indicated any preference for theproduct promoted in the ad.

In this manner, the promotion engine 104 beneficially assists themerchant site 112 in analyzing their consumption data and promotingtheir products on the social networking site 102.

In one embodiment, in addition to promoting products on the socialnetworking site 102, the promotion engine 104 also promotes the productson the merchant site 112 through plug-ins provided by the promotionengine 104. The plug-ins may comprise HTML code that causes the merchantsite 112 to insert an iframe in which the promotion engine 104 canprovide content. In this inserted iframe, in one embodiment, thepromotion engine 104 displays content for promoted products to usersthat satisfy the promotion criteria for the products. The inserted frameor the controlled part also tracks and stores consumption data for usersthat browse through the displayed content for the promoted products. Thestored consumption data is transmitted to the promotion engine 104 toupdate or add to the consumption data already available to the promotionengine 104.

An example of such a plug-in promotes products to users based on theirsocial circles—i.e., user's social groups or circles at work, school,based on the user's interest or demographic information. For thisplug-in, the users provide to the plug-in (or the merchant site 112)their authentication information used on the social networking site 102,and the authentication information is transmitted to the promotionengine 104. The promotion engine 104 uses the identification informationto associate the users' social networking identity with theirconsumption data, and query the social networking site 102 to identify auser's social circles on the social networking site 102 and the usersthat belong to the social circles (hereinafter “circle users”).

The promotion engine 104 analyzes the consumption data for the user'ssocial groups to determine if the users in those social groups havebought or indicated interest in the promoted product or a relatedproduct. Based on this analysis, the promotion engine 104 promotesproducts to the user that are popular, bought, or preferred amongst thecircle users. In one embodiment, the promotion engine 104 displays inthe circles frame the promoted product and information indicating thecircle users that prefer or bought the product.

In this manner, the promotion engine 104 beneficially leverages a user'ssocial data to promote appropriate products to the user through thecircles plug-in. Because a user's buying habits are partly affected bythe preference/taste of the user's social circle, the promotion engine104 beneficially assists the merchant site 112 in promoting products forthe user based on their social circle.

The foregoing description of the embodiments of the invention has beenpresented for the purpose of illustration; it is not intended to beexhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed.Persons skilled in the relevant art can appreciate that manymodifications and variations are possible in light of the abovedisclosure.

Some portions of this description describe the embodiments of theinvention in terms of algorithms and symbolic representations ofoperations on information. These algorithmic descriptions andrepresentations are commonly used by those skilled in the dataprocessing arts to convey the substance of their work effectively toothers skilled in the art. These operations, while describedfunctionally, computationally, or logically, are understood to beimplemented by computer programs or equivalent electrical circuits,microcode, or the like. Furthermore, it has also proven convenient attimes, to refer to these arrangements of operations as modules, withoutloss of generality. The described operations and their associatedmodules may be embodied in software, firmware, hardware, or anycombinations thereof.

Any of the steps, operations, or processes described herein may beperformed or implemented with one or more hardware or software modules,alone or in combination with other devices. In one embodiment, asoftware module is implemented with a computer program productcomprising a computer-readable medium containing computer program code,which can be executed by a computer processor for performing any or allof the steps, operations, or processes described.

Embodiments of the invention may also relate to an apparatus forperforming the operations herein. This apparatus may be speciallyconstructed for the required purposes, and/or it may comprise ageneral-purpose computing device selectively activated or reconfiguredby a computer program stored in the computer. Such a computer programmay be stored in a non-transitory, tangible computer readable storagemedium, or any type of media suitable for storing electronicinstructions, which may be coupled to a computer system bus.Furthermore, any computing systems referred to in the specification mayinclude a single processor or may be architectures employing multipleprocessor designs for increased computing capability.

Embodiments of the invention may also relate to a product that isproduced by a computing process described herein. Such a product maycomprise information resulting from a computing process, where theinformation is stored on a non-transitory, tangible computer readablestorage medium and may include any embodiment of a computer programproduct or other data combination described herein.

Finally, the language used in the specification has been principallyselected for readability and instructional purposes, and it may not havebeen selected to delineate or circumscribe the inventive subject matter.It is therefore intended that the scope of the invention be limited notby this detailed description, but rather by any claims that issue on anapplication based hereon. Accordingly, the disclosure of the embodimentsof the invention is intended to be illustrative, but not limiting, ofthe scope of the invention, which is set forth in the following claims.

1-16. (canceled)
 17. A method implemented by a promotion engine forpromoting a product, the promotion engine being in communication with asocial networking site and a plurality of merchant sites via a network,the method comprising: outputting, by a processor of the promotionengine, a plug-in to each merchant site to display a frame on themerchant site, the frame displaying promotion content provided by theprocessor of the promotion engine, the frame tracking and storingconsumption data for users that browse the displayed promotion content;receiving, by the processor of the promotion engine, from the socialnetworking site, information about a first user's social circle;retrieving, by the processor of the promotion engine, through anapplication programming interface, from the merchant site, allconsumption data of all users on the merchant site; selecting, by theprocessor of the promotion engine, from the retrieved consumption dataon the merchant site, consumption data of the first user's socialcircle; determining, by the processor of the promotion engine, promotioncontent based on the selected consumption data of the first user'ssocial circle, the promotion content including information about atleast one product selected for promotion; sending, by the processor ofthe promotion engine to the frame on the merchant site for display tothe first user, the promotion content; sending, by the processor of thepromotion engine to the frame on the merchant site for display to thefirst user, information indicating the selected consumption data;sending, by the processor of the promotion engine to the socialnetworking site, to display the promotion content on the first user'ssocial profile, the first user's social profile displaying a pluralityof message updates received from the processor of the promotion enginein a timeline, each message update indicating a promoted product likedby the first user, the first user's most recent like being presented atthe top of the timeline, and the first user's earlier likes beingpresented in a descending chronological order; receiving, by theprocessor of the promotion engine, from the frame on the merchant site,the first user's consumption data as the first user browses thepromotion content; and updating the consumption data of the merchantsite based on the first user's consumption data.
 18. The method of claim17, further comprising: providing remote access to the users over thenetwork so any one of the users can receive product promotion at eachmerchant site and the social networking site so that each user hasimmediate access to the product promotion; .
 19. The method of claim 17,further comprising: displaying, in the frame on the merchant site, afield for the first user to enter the first user's authenticationinformation used on the social networking site, the first user'sauthentication information being used to authenticate the first user atthe social networking site.
 20. The method of claim 19, furthercomprising: receiving, by the processor of the promotion engine, fromthe frame on the merchant site, the first user's authenticationinformation used on the social networking site.
 21. The method of claim20, further comprising: sending, by the processor of the promotionengine, a request to the social networking site, the request requestingthe social networking site to retrieve the information about the firstuser's social circle, the request requesting the social networking siteto transmit the retrieved information to the processor of the promotionengine, the request including the first user's authenticationinformation used on the social networking site.
 22. The method of claim17, wherein the received information about the first user's socialcircle includes information about at least one social group that thefirst user belongs to on the social networking site.
 23. The method ofclaim 22, wherein the social networking site retrieves the informationabout the at least one social group of the first user from a socialgraph database and a social interaction database that arecommunicatively coupled to the social networking site, wherein thesocial graph database stores a social graph including informationindicating the at least one social group that the first user belongs to,each social group including one or more users other than the first user,wherein the social interaction database stores data indicating productpreferences of each user within each social group, the retrievedinformation about the one or more social groups including the productpreferences of the users within the at least one social group of thefirst user;
 24. The method of claim 22, wherein the selected consumptiondata of the first user's social circle includes consumption data ofusers of the at least one social group that the first user belongs to,wherein the processor of the promotion engine associates socialnetworking identity of the users of the at least one social group thatthe first user belongs to with the consumption data of the users of theat least one social group that the first user belongs to.
 25. The methodof claim 23, further comprising: determining products for promotionoffered by the merchant site based on the selected consumption data andthe product preferences of the users within the at least one socialgroup that the first user belongs to.
 26. The method of claim 25,wherein the processor of the promotion engine determines the promotioncontent by: analyzing the selected consumption data to identify atrending product and a first product, wherein the first product iscomparable to the products for promotion; receiving from at least one ofthe merchant site or the social networking site, data indicating a higheffectiveness of a previous promotion of the first product; andselecting the at least one product for promotion from amongst theproducts for promotion based on at least one of the selected consumptiondata, the at least one product for promotion being comparable to thetrending product, or the data indicating high effectiveness of theprevious promotion of the first product.
 27. A system for promoting aproduct, comprising: a promotion engine in communication with a socialnetworking site and a plurality of merchant sites via a network,including a processor configured to: send a plug-in to each merchantsite to display a frame on the merchant site, the frame displayingpromotion content provided by the processor of the promotion engine, theframe tracking and storing consumption data for users that browse thedisplayed promotion content; receive, from the social networking site,information about a first user's social circle; retrieve, through anapplication programming interface, from the merchant site, allconsumption data of all users on the merchant site; select, from theretrieved consumption data on the merchant site, consumption data of thefirst user's social circle; determine promotion content based on theselected consumption data of the first user's social circle, thepromotion content including information about at least one productselected for promotion; send to the frame on the merchant site fordisplay to the first user, the promotion content; send to the frame onthe merchant site for display to the first user, information indicatingthe selected consumption data; send to the social networking site, todisplay the promotion content on the first user's social profile, thefirst user's social profile displaying a plurality of message updatesreceived from the processor of the promotion engine in a timeline, eachmessage update indicating a promoted product liked by the first user,the first user's most recent like being presented at the top of thetimeline, and the first user's earlier likes being presented in adescending chronological order; receive, from the frame on the merchantsite, the first user's consumption data as the first user browses thepromotion content; and update the consumption data of the merchant sitebased on the first user's consumption data.
 28. The system of claim 27,wherein the processor is configured to provide remote access to theusers over the network so any one of the users can receive productpromotion at each merchant site and the social networking site so thateach user has immediate access to the product promotion.
 29. The systemof claim 27, wherein the processor is configured to display, in theframe on the merchant site, a field for the first user to enter thefirst user's authentication information used on the social networkingsite, the first user's authentication information being used toauthenticate the first user at the social networking site.
 30. Thesystem of claim 29, wherein the processor is configured to receive, fromthe frame on the merchant site, the first user's authenticationinformation used on the social networking site.
 31. The system of claim30, wherein the processor is configured to: send a request to the socialnetworking site, the request requesting the social networking site toretrieve the information about the first user's social circle, therequest requesting the social networking site to transmit the retrievedinformation to the processor of the promotion engine, the requestincluding the first user's authentication information used on the socialnetworking site.
 32. The system of claim 27, wherein the receivedinformation about the first user's social circle includes informationabout at least one social group that the first user belongs to on thesocial networking site.
 33. The system of claim 32, wherein the socialnetworking site retrieves the information about the at least one socialgroup of the first user from a social graph database and a socialinteraction database that are communicatively coupled to the socialnetworking site, wherein the social graph database stores a social graphincluding information indicating the at least one social group that thefirst user belongs to, each social group including one or more usersother than the first user, wherein the social interaction databasestores data indicating product preferences of each user within eachsocial group, the retrieved information about the one or more socialgroups including the product preferences of the users within the atleast one social group of the first user.
 34. The system of claim 32,wherein the selected consumption data of the first user's social circleincludes consumption data of users of the at least one social group thatthe first user belongs to, wherein the processor of the promotion engineassociates social networking identity of the users of the at least onesocial group that the first user belongs to with the consumption data ofthe users of the at least one social group that the first user belongsto.
 35. The system of claim 33, wherein the processor is configured todetermine products for promotion offered by the merchant site based onthe selected consumption data and the product preferences of the userswithin the at least one social group that the first user belongs to. 36.The system of claim 25, wherein the processor determines the promotioncontent by: analyzing the selected consumption data to identify atrending product and a first product, wherein the first product iscomparable to the products for promotion; receiving from at least one ofthe merchant site or the social networking site, data indicating a higheffectiveness of a previous promotion of the first product; andselecting the at least one product for promotion from amongst theproducts for promotion based on at least one of the selected consumptiondata, the at least one product for promotion being comparable to thetrending product, or the data indicating high effectiveness of theprevious promotion of the first product.